Pinging Michelle's list.
Posted on 06/29/2004 10:55:24 PM PDT by kattracks
Have you checked your child's summer reading list? Beware: Some lame-brained school officials have decided to ditch the sonnets of Shakespeare for the tripe of Tupac.
That's slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur -- the drug-dealing, baseball bat-wielding, cop-hating, Black Panthers-worshiping, convicted sexual abuser who made a fortune extolling the "thug life" before he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago.Teachers in Worcester, Mass., have embraced Shakur's posthumously published book of poems as a way to get middle school students' attention. "We wanted to include books that kids would want to read," Michael O'Sullivan, a member of the summer reading list selection committee, explained to the Telegram and Gazette of Worcester last month before school let out. ''Reading counterculture in schools, and to get kids to read anything that is not completely objectionable, is the goal,'' Deputy Superintendent Stephen E. Mills echoed.
Frances Arena, manager of curriculum and professional development of the Worcester Public Schools, told me this week that Shakur's book will remain on the list for the foreseeable future because it "heightens awareness of character education" and, more importantly, because it's "popular with the kids."
If that's the standard, why not just drop the pretense of academic instruction and assign them comic books and romance novels?
A school board member in Palm Beach County, Fla., is also championing Shakur's so-called literary work. Debra Robinson lobbied to bring Shakur's book into the classroom last month because "I always think we need to capture the children's attention where they are and bring them to where they need to be."
The presumption that children -- and particularly inner-city children -- can only be stimulated by the contemporary and familiar smacks of lazy elitism and latent racism. These educators, and I use that term as loosely as gangster rappers wear their pants, are clearly more interested in appearing cool than in inculcating a refined literary sense in students. Their aim is not enlightenment but dumbed-down ghetto entertainment. So that teachers and pupils can "relate" and be "down with that." So they can "keep it real." You know what I'm sayin'?
The schoolhouse rap peddlers disingenuously argue that Shakur's puerile scribblings serve as useful tools to engage children in reading. Reading? Deciphering is more like it. Shakur's volume, ''The Rose That Grew From Concrete," looks more like a collection of cell phone text messages, teenage hieroglyphics and Backstreet Boys album titles than a collection of poems.
One poem is "Dedicated 2 Me." Another is "Dedicated 2 My Heart." There's one "4 Nelson Mandela" and another "2 Marilyn Monroe," which laments: "They could never understand what u set out 2 do instead they chose 2 ridicule u." Another Shakur opus is titled "When Ure Hero Falls." Still another muses: "What Is It That I (insert pictograph of an eyeball) Search 4."
A dictionary, perhaps?
In riveting prose that presumably rivals Frost or Longfellow, Shakur brags that he is "more than u can handle" and "hotter than the wax from a candle." Edgar Allan Poe had Annabel Lee. Shakur had Renee ("u were the one 2 reach into my heart"), April ("I want 2 c u"), Elizabeth ("the seas of our friendship R calm"), Michelle ("u and I have perfect hearts"), Carmen ("I wanted u more than I wanted me"), Marquita ("u were pure woman 2 me"), Irene ("I knew from the First glance that u would be hard 2 4get"), and Jada.
Proclaiming his love "4 Jada," Shakur pays gallant literary tribute to the object of his desire: "u bring me 2 climax without sex."
Lord Byron, he wasn't.
In an introduction to the dead rapper's volume, Shakur's manager, Leila Steinberg, suggests that her hero has been unjustly denied his "place as a literary artist/poet" because of the "media's sometimes negative portrayal" of him. May I politely suggest that he has been denied a place among the world's greatest poets because his writing is no better than a four-letter word that rhymes with "rap"?
The Western literary canon has been flushed down the cultural toilet in favor of shallow ramblings by celebrity thugs whose thoughts are best left on bathroom walls.
As 2Pac might have responded: 3 Cheers 4 Diversity.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
At least the Democrats' captive constituency will know what hip hop and gangsta rap is all about.
Dembonics. Film at 11.
At the age of nine, we're teaching him to figure baseball batting averages in his head. He's also helping me to figure out average velocities of .308 and .223 cartridges while he assists me at the loading bench.
Next weeks book is "The Red Badge Of Courage" and after that we start on "The Chronicles Of Narnia" together.
Mom has been teaching him ratios using recipes for breads and pastries in the kitchen. He's well versed in the life cycles of various microorganisms using the yeasts we use in our home brews.
He can figure the alcohol content of beers and meads all by himself.
Now that's a boy who's receiving a well rounded education. I can't wait till next years parent-teacher day.
L
Ok, that's it. I am officially launching my Gansta Rap career as "Scoop Doggy Doo"...
What's up with dis s***? I don't even get props when I'm dead yo! God***! "Big Pappa" is p****! Junior Mafia, help me out yo! I got skillz that those profs don' even know exist! My rhymes be making John Donne check himself.
ROFLMAO!
BTW. Sounds like you're doing a great job with the boy.
Pity about that Two Pack Shaker guy. Never met him, although I was acquainted with his brothers Six Pack and Twelve Pack.
I think it's absolutely shameful that he is being denied his rightful place as a literary figure alongside singer/songwriter Charles Manson, environmentalist/author Ted Kaczynski, and culinary innovator Jeffrey Dahmer.
Oh, wait. They are in the same place (well, three of them are, and they're saving Manson a place. A warm place).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Well, stune my beeber.
Other members include 18 pack, 24 pack and now even a 30 pack has been sighted.
"First he was 2pac, then, after a little surgery (i.e. that unpleasant little incident involving the hail of automatic gunfire back in New York) he was 1pac, and now...well, I guess he's no pac."
Seriously, what kind of fool lays down a track taunting the people who just tried to off him?
Months earlier, no less!
These guys may have the Bloods and the Crips, but NYC is the home of the Mafia.
What's the problem with these stunads? Haven't they ever watched The Pope of Greenwich Village?
Sounds like it was written by Zoolander.
Oy vey, that left a mark!
<|:-)~~
Who is this person? What are her educational credentials...and most importantly...how did such a blatant idiot end up in this position?? Perfect example of the need to totally reform our schools from the bottom up; not tinker around the edges.
Oh, and since when did "being popular with the kids" count for anything? Maybe they should go with "Rap Appreciation" or "History of the NBA" for 7 hours a day. Good grief!
Perhaps Tupac was simply a frustrated mathematician at heart.
2good 2 b True"
Pinging Michelle's list.
It took sixteen posts before somebody got around to posting a picture. Come on people. We're better than that.
This waste of space should be required to READ EXCERPTS of this "book," in front of the text APPEARING ON A PROJECTION SCREEN, to the SCHOOL BOARD AND PARENTS.
And "more importantly" is not acceptable grammar. It is "more important."
Whoops--looks like "more importantly" was Michelle's mistake, not our dear, darling Frances'!
My bad. Pet peeve.
But Michelle COULD have been quoting a bit... ;o)
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